Czechs Say They Warned U.S. Of Chemical Weapons in Gulf

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Soldiers whose sole responsibility during the 1991 Persian Gulf war was chemical detection say that American military commanders were repeatedly warned that sensitive detection equipment had identified Iraqi chemical weapons on the battlefield -- and that the toxins were wafting over unprotected American troops.

The soldiers from the Czech army, whose training in chemical detection is considered among the best in the world, said Czech detection teams patrolling the northern Saudi Arabian desert in January 1991 were convinced that nerve gas detected in the early days of the war had been released from Iraqi chemical plants bombed by the United States.

Yet despite the reputation of Czech soldiers and their chemical equipment for reliability, combat logs compiled by officers working for Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf show that American commanders ignored Czech warnings that low levels of nerve and mustard gas had been detected in the vicinity of American troops.

Czech soldiers recalled that even as they hurriedly pulled on their gas masks and rubberized chemical warfare suits after detecting chemical agents in the northern Saudi desert, the Americans who were stationed only several hundred feet away remained unprotected.

''We were immediately putting on our suits and gas masks, while the Americans were walking around without their masks -- without any of the equipment,'' said Vaclav Hlavac, a retired chief warrant officer in the Czech army.

Like thousands of gulf war veterans in the United States, many Czech troops have also fallen ill since the war. Former Czech military officials say the Defense Department was informed after the war that Czech soldiers were suffering from many of the same health problems that have afflicted the American veterans.

Interviews with the Czech soldiers and officials, including two former Czech defense ministers, raise new doubts about the public accounts offered by the Pentagon, which has come under harsh criticism in recent months over its treatment of thousands of gulf war veterans who say they are sick because of exposure to chemical or biological weapons.

The Pentagon acknowledged this month that more than 15,000 American troops may have been exposed to nerve gas when a battalion of American combat engineers blew up an Iraqi ammunition depot in March 1991, a few days after the end of the war.

While the Defense Department has insisted that there is almost no scientific evidence suggesting that soldiers exposed to trace amounts of chemical weapons will suffer from long-term health problems, scientists say little research has ever been done on the issue.

It was only in November 1993, more than two and a half years after the war, that the Pentagon publicly confirmed that the Czech chemical detections during the war were ''credible'' -- in other words, that chemical weapons had indeed been detected.

As recently as last August, the Defense Department reported to gulf war veterans that Czech soldiers were not complaining of unusual health problems -- evidence, Pentagon officials suggested, that chemical exposures were not responsible for the health problems of American soldiers.

But interviews here show many Czech troops have been complaining for years about ailments that they attribute to their service in the gulf war, and that American military officials were made aware of their reported health problems.

Mr. Hlavac said in an interview that nerve gas and blister agent was first detected on Jan. 19, 1991, the second day of the war. He said Czech soldiers hurriedly pulled on their gas masks and chemical warfare suits. But the American troops stationed nearby did nothing, he said, because their commanders were not convinced that low levels of the agents could harm the soldiers.

''The American thought our chemists were crazy, so our chemists took the Americans to their laboratories to prove to the Americans what they had detected,'' Mr. Hlavac said. Eventually, he said, the Americans acknowledged that they, too, had detected some chemical agents.

''After about half a day, one of the American officers confirmed that, yes, we measured the chemicals, but he said that the Americans didn't want to sound an alarm because there were only low levels of the chemicals and it would cause panic among the soldiers.''

Czech Soldiers U.S. and Prague Vary on Health

The clearest contradiction between the Pentagon and the accounts offered here by Czech officials is over the question of the health of the 269 Czech soldiers who served in the gulf on chemical-detection teams. The Pentagon has pointed to the health records of the Czech veterans in suggesting that chemical weapons exposure had not been a serious health hazard in the war.

In a report issued to gulf war veterans in the United States three months ago, the Pentagon stated that according to the Czech Defense Ministry, ''no members of the former Czechslovak contingent showed symptoms during or after the detections were made in Saudi Arabia'' and suggested that the Czech veterans were still being closely monitored for health problems.

''No evidence of physical effects from exposure to harsh climatic conditions or chemical agents was found among any of the soldiers,'' the report stated flatly.

''Based on the results of all medical examinations of Czech Persian Gulf veterans conducted to date,'' it continued, the official position of the Czech Government ''is that there is no established direct link between veterans' illnesses and their service in the Persian Gulf.'' The report was released on Gulflink, an Internet site -- http:// www.dtic.dla.mil/gulflink/ -- set up by the Defense Department to provide information to gulf war veterans.

But in interviews here in the Czech capital and elsewhere in the country, Czech officials said that the monitoring program was actually shut down two years ago, and that they had told their American counterparts that some of the Czech soldiers had indeed complained of illness.

Before the monitoring program was shut down, an estimated 30 to 40 Czech troops -- or about 11 to 15 percent of the soldiers who had served in the gulf --had sought medical help for symptoms they attributed to the gulf war, including chronic fatigue, digestive ailments, rashes and joint pains. Their health complaints are similar to those reported by thousands of American veterans of the gulf war.

Pentagon officials said the Defense Department had never intended to mislead American veterans about the health of the Czech troops.

In a statement prepared in response to a reporter's questions, the Pentagon said: ''The conclusions regarding the health of the Czech soldiers participating in the gulf war that were posted to Gulflink in August were based on relevant information received at that time. As in all cases, as new evidence becomes available, we take it into consideration for our investigation.'' The statement did not address the question of whether American officials were told that Czech soldiers had complained of illness.

Since the Czech monitoring program is over, there is no reliable way for the Czech Government to determine if large numbers of the gulf war veterans have fallen ill since 1994.

Many of the Czech troops have since left the military and now seek private medical care, while others are now citizens of Slovakia, which separated from the former Czechoslovakia in 1993.

Lieut. Col. Lubomir Smehlik, a veteran chemical detection specialist who commanded the Czech teams in Saudi Arabia, said that although he had lost contact with most of the soldiers, many of them ''are sick because of the war.'' He said he understood that ''6 to 7 percent have cancer -- maybe 8 percent, I don't know exactly.''

There is no way to confirm his estimates, given the refusal of the Czech Defense Ministry to release a roster of the Czech soldiers so they might be contacted. Like the Pentagon, the Czech Government has insisted that it has no evidence that any of the health problems of its gulf war veterans might be related to exposure to chemical or biological weapons.

The death of one Czech veteran of the gulf war was publicized last year. A Prague newspaper, Mlada Fronta Dnes, reported that the soldier, Jan Huzan, who died in March 1995 of cancer of the digestive tract, had told colleagues that he believed the cancer had been caused by exposure to chemicals in the gulf.

But according to the reports, he had not wanted his suspicions about his health made public until after his death, for fear of losing his job in Czech military intelligence.

Chemical Agents Czech Specialists Had Unique Role

In 1990, the Czech Government, then newly freed from Soviet domination, was eager to participate in the Western military coalition forming in the Persian Gulf in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August of that year.

The Czech army had long been renowned for its abilities in chemical warfare detection. Among the soldiers of the former Warsaw Pact, the Czechs were known to insist on especially rigorous training of their chemical specialists, and their equipment was among the most accurate. And so in the gulf, the Czechs took on the responsibility for chemical detection, working directly for the Saudi armed forces.

Of the Czech troops sent to Saudi Arabia in December 1990, 58 were chemical weapons specialists, and they brought along a variety of sophisticated chemical-detection equipment, including truck-mounted chemical labs.

''We could detect all well-known chemical agents, even determine the structure of the chemical agents,'' said Colonel Smehlik, who retired from the Army earlier this year. ''For the chemical specialists, the training was at least four years. Most of these men were in their 30's then.''

The colonel, who is now 48, said that all of the Czech soldiers were in good health when they left for the gulf. ''We had to be in good shape, we had all been examined by doctors before we went,'' he said, sitting in the dining room of his apartment near Prague, one of its walls decorated with a rug bearing the image of a mosque, a souvenir from his service in the gulf.

The Czech soldiers were deployed across the deserts of northern Saudi Arabia, many of them at the King Khalid Military City, a vast Saudi military base that was used as a staging area for American troops.

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When the war began on Jan. 17, 1991, with American bombers attacking Iraq chemical plants, the Czechs were ready. Their detection equipment measured the desert air continuously for any trace of chemical agents. And it was not long before the first chemical cloud wafted over them.

On Jan. 19, they say, two teams of Czech soldiers stationed nearly 15 miles apart in the northern Saudi desert began to detect low levels of nerve and mustard gas. French troops near the King Khalid Military City also reported detection of ''infinitesimal amounts of nerve and blister agents'' that same day. ''As soon as we detected it, we sounded the chemical alarms,'' Colonel Smehlik said.

The Czechs said they were immediately convinced that the chemicals had been released by the fierce American bombing campaign that had begun two days earlier. The early bombing had targeted factories and depots where the Iraqis were known to store chemical and biological weapons.

''There were clouds of chemicals produced by the facilities in Iraq,'' said Maj. Miroslav Sudrla, a 38-year-old chemical specialist who still serves in the Czech army. ''They were low concentrations -- slightly dangerous.''

At King Khalid Military City, Mr. Hlavac, the retired warrant officer, said that the American commanders working nearby were immediately notified about the chemical agents -- ''we had perfect communication with the Americans'' -- and Czech soldiers were immediately ordered to don their gas masks and chemical warfare suits.

But the American soldiers, he said, did not receive a similar order, nor were they told that chemicals had been detected. He recalled that one of the American soldiers decided not to alert the troops under his command because he did not want to create a ''panic.'' Mr. Hlavac only remembered the soldier's first name, John, and that he was a major.

''The Americans didn't want to alert everybody because it was a low level,'' he said. ''Their reaction was very different from ours.'' The fact that the Czech soldiers were pulling on their suits and gas masks did not startle the American troops because ''they may have just assumed that this was mere training,'' Mr. Hlavac said.

Chemical Warnings U.S. Ignored Czech Detections

Combat logs maintained by officers working for General Schwarzkopf, the commander of the American-led military coalition, show that senior American commanders were aware of the Czech detections but chose to ignore them.

In the statement released in response to a reporter's questions, the Pentagon said, ''We have found no evidence that coalition commanders failed to respond to any of the Czech reports of detections.''

But the logs suggest otherwise.

A log entry at 10:46 P.M. on Jan. 19 reports that the American commanders -- who were then in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, in central Saudi Arabia -- were informed that the Czechs had detected nonlethal levels of mustard gas.

''Explained that this was impossible,'' the log officer reported. ''This sort of thing is bound to happen.''

As the reports of Czech detections continued over the next two days, the American commanders continued to dismiss their importance. At 5:10 P.M. on Jan. 20, the log reported that Czech and French troops had detected nerve gas ''and that hazard is flowing down from factory/storage bombed in Iraq. Predictably this has/is going to become a problem.''

On Jan. 22, American troops told the American commanders in Riyadh that the Czechs had made another detection. How should American troops in northern Saudi Arabia respond to the Czech reports? ''Told them to disregard any reports coming from Czechs,'' the log reported.

At least one detection was not ignored. On Jan. 24, Czech soldiers in northern Saudi Arabia identified a patch of sand approximately one square yard that had been contaminated with mustard agent, about six miles north of King Khalid Military City. ''Proper action was taken to mark the area, which coalition forces then avoided,'' the Pentagon said in its statement this week. Neither the Pentagon nor the Czech Government has been able to explain publicly how the mustard agent got there.

The disclosure that American commanders had ignored many of the other Czech chemical detections during the 1991 war has created some discomfort for government officials here, who are eager not to offend the Pentagon as the Czech Republic seeks to join NATO, the Western military alliance. The Czech Republic's application for membership is expected to be formally considered for the first time in December.

Yet while Czech officials insist that they do not intend any criticism of American military commanders and Pentagon officials, they say they are justifiably proud in the training of Czech soldiers, and they wonder whether the Americans were too quick to dismiss the Czech alarms.

''You know the self-confidence of the Americans,'' said Gen. Miroslav Vacek, a former Czech defense minister who helped arrange the 1990 deployment of the Czech chemical-detection teams to Saudi Arabia. ''There was a certain amount of underestimation of the problem by the Americans. I suppose that if you're waging a war, you're counting on some losses.''

Health Problems Czech Soldiers Report Sickness

While Czech soldiers may have been better protected from chemical weapons during the war, many of them have nonetheless insisted that they are sick from exposure to chemical or biological agents during the war. And like thousands of American veterans of the gulf war, they accuse their government of doing far too little to help them, and of treating their health complaints with contempt.

''Yes, it is exactly the same story for us as for the Americans,'' said Mr. Hlavac, the former warrant officer, who has suffered from respiratory problems since the war and lost virtually all of his upper teeth within two years of his return from the war. (Mr. Huzan, the gulf war veteran who died last year, was also reported to have lost virtually all of his upper teeth after the war.)

''I'm bitter about the total lack of interest that the Czech army has shown in this subject,'' Mr. Hlavac said.

He said he went to the Central Military Hospital in Prague to seek an explanation for the mysterious loss of his teeth; he said that he had never had serious dental problems before.

But he said that the Czech doctor dismissed his complaints, even questioning whether Mr. Hlavac even served in the gulf war and whether he was entitled to any special dental care. Mr. Hlavac said he became so angry and frustrated by the encounter with the military doctor that he had dentures made by a private dentist.

While the Czech military has publicly promised that gulf war veterans are entitled to full medical care at Government expense, it is clear that they received a mixed reception when they sought treatment from the army.

''In my opinion, these problems are 80 percent psychological,'' said Dr. Frantisek Sedlak, an internist at the Central Military Hospital who has given medical checkups to about 15 of the gulf war veterans.

He said that, like the Americans, the Czech soldiers had often complained of chronic fatigue, joint aches, headaches and digestive problems. ''They were similar symptoms to the Americans,'' he explained in an interview.

But Dr. Sedlak, like his counterparts in the Pentagon, said there was no evidence that chemical or biological weapons might have been responsible for such problems.

''These chemicals either kill you or they leave you alone, without any consequences,'' he said. So he said that he dealt with most of the Czech soldiers who sought his help ''by trying a little psychotherapy and prescribing a small amount of sedatives to tranquilize them.''

He said that he assumed the treatment was successful because ''none of them has come back.'' In 1994, the Defense Ministry shut down the monitoring program because of what a spokeswoman described as a ''lack of interest'' among Czech veterans, although they may still seek free medical treatment from the Government.

Czech Defense Prague Confirms Illness and Agents

In large part because of the health complaints of the Czech soldiers who had served in the gulf, the Czech Government revealed publicly on July 29, 1993, that Czech soldiers had detected sarin, a nerve gas, and other chemical agents in northern Saudi Arabia. The Czechs attributed the detections to fallout from the bombing of Iraq chemical factories and depots.

Four months later, on Nov. 10, 1993, the Pentagon acknowledged publicly that the Czech equipment was reliable and that the Czech detections were accurate. But in a statement released at the time, the Pentagon insisted that the Czech detections were not related to ''mysterious health problems that have victimized some of our veterans.''

Antonin Baudys, a Czech businessman who was the defense minister in 1993, said he was convinced that the Czech detections were accurate and that they were reported to the United States during the war almost instantly. ''I'm convinced that this information was forwarded up,'' he said.

He said that in meetings with American officials while he was defense minister, the Americans were clearly informed that ''dozens'' of Czech soldiers had started to fall ill, many of them complaining of the same sorts of ailments as gulf war veterans in the United States. ''We provided them with all the information we had,'' he said. ''We told them that the soldiers are sick.''

Since leaving the defense ministry two years, Mr. Baudys said that he had tried to follow the progress of the gulf war veterans and that ''it's become more apparent that their health problems are worsening.''

Although scientists know little about the long-term chronic effects of exposure to low levels of chemical agents, Mr. Baudys said he believed it was becoming clear that even trace amounts of chemical weapons could have serious health effects. ''This could be the lesson of this situation,'' he said. ''No one believes that the soldiers are making this up.''

A version of this special report; chronology appears in print on October 19, 1996, on Page 1001001 of the National edition with the headline: Czechs Say They Warned U.S. Of Chemical Weapons in Gulf. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe